


First and Last

by Aeremaee



Series: DCTV Stories [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, First Kiss, First Time, Fix-It, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mick Rory Defence Squad, Predestination Paradox, Time Skips, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 20:47:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11952342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeremaee/pseuds/Aeremaee
Summary: The last time Mick kisses Len, it’s 2013. The first time Len kisses Mick, it’s 2014.He’s never going to love someone the way he loves Len. Even when he hates him. Especially when he hates him. It’s hard to shake sometimes, but he loves Len more than burning, more than any sort of hope for salvation he’s ever had. History doesn’t change that. Death doesn’t change that. The time masters and their rules don’t change that. There’s no life without Len, not really and not meaningfully. He wants him back. He has to have him back.





	First and Last

**Author's Note:**

> The wonderful artwork to go with this story was made by Beltthesea and can be viewed here!

The last time Mick kisses Len, it’s 2013.

He’s too infuriating, this Len, too callous and too cutting. The soft edge to him is gone. Doesn’t exist yet, rather. But it’s Len, and he’s alive, and it’s all Mick can do to keep his hands to himself. He sits at the back of the bar and watches, flicking his lighter open and closed over and over. With every click he hears a whisper in his ears, urging and seductive, to just flick the wheel and light the flame, to just light the flame and admire its shape and colours and the way it dances, to just watch it dance across the table, to just…

_You can use this. It’s safer than matches._

He clicks the lighter shut and puts it down a little too heavily. Heads turn in his direction. Len’s head turns.

Mick grits his teeth, puts away the lighter and watches Len saunter over to him, beer loosely clutched between his fingers. Mick’s own fingers twitch and he fists his hands under the table.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Len says.

“Thought I might,” Mick replies.

Len sits down, dragging the seat around and swinging his leg over with unnecessary flourish. He’s annoyed. Mick purses his lips. This was a bad idea.

“What brings you to Central City?” Len asks, deceptively casual.

“Just been a while since we talked, is all.”

“Don’t have any jobs lined up, if that’s what you’re after.”

“No, no. Though you should feel free to call me when you need me,” he says, and immediately tries to backtrack. “Like, my skills or whatever.”

Len eyes him with one eyebrow lifted, in that way he has. Mick’s throat clicks when he tries to swallow.

“What’s going on?” Len asks, all pretence gone.

“I just… Wanted to say something that shouldn’t remain unsaid, you know?”

Inanely he’s wondering if his jacket collar is up, if he’s displaying scars he’s not supposed to have yet. He wants his lighter, needs to watch the flame dance so he won’t stare at the cold fire in Len’s eyes, so he can get his breathing down.

“What’s with the touchy feely? If you have something to say, just say it,” Len bites.

Mick gets up, dragging his sleeves down over his hands while he does so Len won’t see the burns on his wrist, won’t see his hands shaking with the desire to drag him across the table and…

“This was a mistake,” he says, but doesn’t turn to go, doesn’t look away.

“You’re the best man I ever knew,” he blurts out. “You might not think you’re a good man, Len, but I know better. You’re a hero, to me.”

Len doesn’t react, doesn’t twitch, keeps looking at him with that eyebrow raised and Mick wants to burn the whole city down.

“See you around,” he manages, and walks out.

Len catches up with him in the parking lot, because of course he does, and Mick vaguely registers his teammates ducking into the shadows before Len grabs him by the shoulder and spins him around to face him.

“What the hell is up with you?” he demands. “Out of the blue you come see me and tell me that I’m a _good man_? Are you right in the head? Are you dying? We haven’t been in touch for months and now this? Mick, what the…”

And he’s so _alive_ and Mick can’t bring himself to care that this is not how it happened, that he shouldn’t even be here right now; his whole mind is on fire and his fingers have a life of their own so he buries them in Len’s _stupid_ parka and drags him in and kisses him, kisses him with everything he has, all the grief and all the anger and all the love he was dumb enough to never actually vocalise.

Len clutches at him and bites his lip and kisses him wildly, like he’s not surprised at all, like it was only a matter of time before they made it here from that first moment they met, and maybe it was.

It’s the last time he will ever get to do this. He wishes he’d done it so many more times, that he’d not wasted so much of the time that they did have. He wishes he’d just _told_ him. He won’t say it now, when it makes no difference and no sense.

When Len finally pulls away, they’re both panting and Len is looking at him, wondering, calculating, so Mick kisses him one more time, sweetly, tenderly, and takes a step back.

“See you around,” he says again.

This time, Len doesn’t follow him.

 

 

The first time Len kisses Mick, it’s 2014.

Part of Mick can kick himself over this; Len and him, drawing on each other with barely an inch between the barrels of their guns, the guns Len got for them, the guns that suit them so perfectly. It’s not like he doesn’t know that he lost control. It’s not like he doesn’t care. It’s not like he’s out to disappoint Len, but it seems he can’t do anything else anymore.

The larger part of him is wondering what the _fuck_ is going on. There’s a look on Len’s face he can’t read. A look he saw for the first time when Len gave him the Heat Gun, and again while he was teaching Mick every part and circuit of the thing. He knows what Len does to people who want out, who skip out on the job, who go against the plan. And here is Len, pulling back his gun with that look on his face, telling him to _take the painting and go_ , if he wants to. He’s sure it’s written all over his own face that he has no idea what to make of all of this, and _what is that look?_

“If we want to make this city our home,” Len is saying, “ _your_ home, we have to deal with the Flash.”

Mick violently wishes for his lighter, needs to hear the click and fwish, needs to see the flame flicker so he can channel the roar of heat that ignites in him at Len’s words with that _look_ and he needs, he needs, he needs…

It’s probably going to cost him his head but he takes the only out he sees. He torches the painting.

The next thing he knows Len has tossed the Cold Gun on the table and is clawing at him, kissing him almost savagely. Mick’s body moves even before it all clicks together in his head, finds that this might be even better than his lighter, the one Len gave him all those years ago, to channel that urge to _burn_. He wants to set Len on fire, so he gets to it, tosses his gun to land on the table or wherever, and grabs the back of Len’s head, the meat of his thigh, hoists him up after a few biting kisses to lay him out right next to his own gun. Len meets him every step of the way and Mick never wants it to end, is sure they must have been heading for this ever since that first day.

“Say you’ll stay,” Len pants.

“I’m all yours,” he replies, before he even realises what he’s going to say. It’s true, though, and for a split second there’s a tender sort of surprise written in Len’s eyes, like he knows that Mick means something more than just what he’s saying. Which is probably true, too, if Mick would stop to think about it. Instead he puts his best effort towards making Len stop thinking altogether.

 

 

The last time Len kisses Mick, it’s 2046.

He can feel it the moment he steps out of the Waverider. There’s something about this city, this world, that resonates with him like nothing has before. He’s swept up in it, exhilarated by the limitless potential. He knows Len is humouring him, but he’s also seen the glint in Len’s eye when he shrugged on the fur coat. The thumping bass and the booze and the whirl of bodies around them, the girls trying to rub off on them, the freedom of this place, it’s like everything Mick’s ever considered a perfect world. Well, almost perfect. He reels Len in and kisses him messily, right there on the dance floor. Len wraps his arms around him and kisses back, sliding a thigh between Mick’s legs. Mick doesn’t need any more encouragement.

He carries Len to the opulent bedroom his new minions showed him earlier, with its giant four poster bed and hundred pillows to lay Len down on. Len pulls him on top of him and sets to getting the coat off. It’s almost not like him, to let go like this, but Mick knows the city has gotten to him too, even if he’s still trying to work out how he feels about that. Mick could make him a king here, give him everything he deserves and watch everything else burn down. He thinks it might satisfy every urge in him. Almost every urge.

He lets Len strip him of the coat and his shirt, rake his nails over his back before he gets to stripping him naked in return. He likes having Len like that, not in control, at his mercy underneath him, if not vulnerable. Mick would never make that mistake. He gets his mouth on Len everywhere he can reach, slowly sliding down his body until he can take him into his mouth to suck him off languidly, bringing him to the edge and back down again over and over until he has Len completely incoherent and loose, beyond any stress or worry, beyond schemes and backup plans to backup plans. Until Len is just Len and Mick is just Mick, who loves him.

When Deathstroke Junior and his cronies waltz into his bar, it takes actual effort not to kill him right there for ruining the afterglow. As always, Len’s clearer head prevails and Mick is okay with that, until that clearer head decides that saving the world is more important than being Mick’s partner. For the first time since they met, Mick feels like Len thinks he’s a freak, is a lesser person for being who he is. He gets it all the time from people like Rip, but from Len, who’s always made him feel whole, if not normal, it breaks something in him.

“If you lay a hand on me again, you’ll burn, too.”

He can’t shake his anger, can’t shake what just might be grief over their relationship, can’t not snap at Len whenever he opens his mouth. Can’t help but let it cause him to make mistakes he can’t recover from. Mistakes that end up with him on his back on some backwater planet or in some godsforsaken time to get shot by the one person in this life that he loves.

He reaches out a hand and Len grasps it. He has no more strength to pull him down and Len doesn’t pull him up, tell him it’s over now, take him back to the ship. Just a last bit of comfort for old times’ sake before Len does what he feels he has to. He wishes they were still fighting so he could press his body into Len’s and use it to do something else.

Instead he just thinks back to their first kiss and all the things he never said and now never will, and waits for the end.

The end, of course, doesn’t come. Somewhere towards the end of his second century, he really wishes it had, and that feeling becomes a new baseline, somewhere for the Time Masters to attach their hooks to, something that allows them to finally fashion him into what they want. They misunderstand, though. But who could understand the complicated way Len is tied to him? Who could understand that he doesn’t want to die, but still wants Len to have killed him? For Len to have saved him from _this_ before it even started? That he loves Len so much that he can never stop, even while he also hates him?

So when they send him after the Waverider with his head so messed up in spite of what they believe, it’s only a matter of time before he breaks free, even if it only happens after he’s already done things he can never take back but will haunt his nightmares for decades to come. This time it ends with both of them on the floor and no way for them to fix this, not really. He hopes that maybe this time, time will heal instead of break.

 

 

The last time Mick kisses Len, it’s 2013.

This time, Len doesn’t follow him. He turns and walks back into the bar and it’s all Mick can do not to look back.

Rip and Ray are there, patting him awkwardly on the shoulders, leading him gently back to the Waverider and keeping up a steady stream of small talk. Mick is so grateful he could drown in it, even if he’d bite off his tongue before he’d ever articulate it. He likes to think they know anyway.

Sarah is waiting for them on the ramp, with Kendra right behind her. He gets escorted to the galley where Jax puts a mug of hot chocolate, of all things, in front of him. If it’d been anyone else he would have taken it for a joke, but the kid has somehow managed to get the _real_ stuff and there’s a lump in his throat it might just manage to dissolve. None of them say anything to him, but they sit around him and talk about Leonard, and Laurel, about what they’re going to do next, about the state of the bathroom, about what to eat, about what time period would be cool to visit – about how they are alive and how they’ll move on. Mick sits and drinks his chocolate and flicks his lighter open, on and closed, open, on and closed, over and over until it all lulls him to sleep in his chair.

He wanders the ship in a daze for days, flicking the lighter, _Len’s_ lighter, hearing his voice, seeing him from the corner of his eye.

_“You can have this, if you want,” a light voice said, a peculiar drawl to it. He looked up to see the skinny kid he’d fished out of a brawl yesterday, holding out his hand to present him with a lighter. He tried not to let the swooping feeling in his stomach show on his face._

_“Say what?” he barked._

_“You need this, right?” the kid went on. Mick never did find out how Len had known, but somehow he had. “We can help each other out. I could use someone to watch my back, and I could keep an eye out for you. Think about it. Either way, you can use this. It’s safer than matches.”_

His team are always there, grieving and recovering themselves, keeping an eye on him. It’s the first time since he can remember that that makes him feel safe instead of anxious.

It takes him a few days to talk himself into a shower and a shave. His hands shake when he takes out the razor.

_“It’s a good thing you were never particularly vain,” Len smiled, looking Mick over, trying to decide where to start. He ran foamy fingers over Mick’s head, soaping him up, before cleaning his hands and grabbing the razor._

_“Stay still now,” he said, and ran the razor over Mick’s skin. Mick tried not to shiver but he was sure Len noticed anyway. It seemed to take forever and was over in a moment and Mick was both relieved and disappointed._

_“There you go,” Len said. “New hair style. If you want to grow it out again, you’re going to have to be more careful.”_

_“Think maybe I’ll keep it like this, if you’ll help me.”_

_“Anytime.”_

It’s not like he’s never done this himself before. He and Len have not always been together. But this time is different. Len will never do this again. Mick will never sit under his hands again, at his mercy and grateful for it. When he makes the first stroke of the razor he sees Len behind him in the mirror, leaning against the doorpost and smiling that smirk at him. When he blinks, he’s gone.

 

 

The time Len kisses Mick like it’s the first time all over again, it’s 2017.

He tries not to talk to Len when the others can hear him. They know something is up with him, and he doesn’t want to worry them more than he has to. They make sure he never drinks alone. He tries to be a helpful team member to make up for the times when he wasn’t.

He sees Len all the time, now, when he’s not focused on their mission or breaking through the apathy to feel excitement about the things they run into. But not even ninjas are enough to make him _want_ to stay away from what he knows is just a hallucination. He just doesn’t really care that that’s all it is, or what it probably means about his health. He just wants Len, no matter how he can have him.

When Len comes back, it feels like a miracle, like a second chance to do everything right. The grief is still so much of his being that there isn’t any choice to make, not really, even though his head is torn over what it means for his team, his family. Even if it tears at his already ripped apart heart.

Of course, Mick doesn’t remember that it does. Doesn’t remember there’s anything different to remember than him and Len, owning Central City, flirting outrageously in front of the hostages, living like kings where people can see them and being disgustingly domestic where people can’t. To Mick, it’s been six months of bliss since the day Len grabbed him after a heist gone perfectly right and kissed him like it was the only way he could breathe anymore.

To the rest of his team, not so much. When Ray arrives with his little gizmo and rips his world apart, he can’t find much to be relieved about. When Len kills Amaya it doesn’t escape Mick that their positions are reversed from 2046 and that they might not live through it this time, either. When they’re on opposite sides of the battlefield he wonders why fate would have brought them together in the first place, if it was only for them to keep ending up on opposite sides. He wonders if this Len will grieve for him, if he’s the one to die this time. If it will be better that way.

Fate isn’t kind.

Len’s corpse is on the ground before him and he can’t stop looking, can’t stop thinking about what will happen when this change to the timeline will catch up to him, to the _real him_ or whatever, what it will mean if there is no Leonard Snart to kiss him after he torches a painting they stole together.

Vaguely he registers his other self raging at Ray, even though they both know Ray acted on instinct, did it to save Mick, did it because they’re family and he made a choice, the right choice even, but neither of them can spare that much calm and logic right now.

He’s never going to love someone the way he loves Len. Even when he hates him. Especially when he hates him. It’s hard to shake sometimes, but he loves Len more than burning, more than any sort of hope for salvation he’s ever had. History doesn’t change that. Death doesn’t change that. The Time Masters and their rules don’t change that. There’s no life without Len, not really and not meaningfully. He wants him back. He has to have him back.

He looks at himself, his real self. Sees everything he’s feeling written on that face.

“Go,” Rory croaks, already having thought of everything Mick is thinking himself. They know he can do it.

He runs. He goes against the plan, skips out on the job, leaves his team, his _family_ behind and he runs.

He’s thought this plan over more times than he can count. He doesn’t even really know why he never found a way to go through with it. Maybe there was still enough Cronos in him to be wary of the consequences. Maybe it was the way his team cared for him that made him feel he still had a family. Maybe he fooled himself into thinking he could live without him, somehow. As if the events of the past few however long it’s been didn’t conclusively prove otherwise. He probably should have apologised a bit more eloquently. With actual words. He thinks about his team, both living and dying while he runs, and likes to think they might know anyway.

Gideon is apprehensive but he’s Chronos, and more importantly for his purposes a time remnant, and he knows a trick or two even Rip Hunter might not, and together they punch a hole in the fabric of space and time that gets them back to the Vanishing Point before the Oculus goes up. The time line is screeching in protest and the whole complex shakes and warps around him but that’s fine, half of his team is already back on their own Waverider and he only needs a minute more. After that, things will right themselves. Time wants to happen, and this time it will happen right.

Somehow he knows the scene by heart even though he’s never witnessed it. His past self is knocked out on the floor with Leonard looking down at him and Sara making a half-assed attempt to change Len’s mind even though they all know _someone_ has to do it. He watches her kiss him like he knew she would, and not a single part of him feels jealous; instead he feels a strange sort of gratitude where before he was only numb to it, that Len didn’t have to be so alone at the end, that she was there to give him some warmth before the icy cold of death. That it makes for the perfect distraction. Sara must see him but doesn’t give him away, lets none of the surprise she might feel read in her eyes while she gazes into Len’s until they roll up and close when Mick hits him in the back of the head.

“Should I bother with the question when the answer is time travel?” Sara drawls, managing to sound coolly bored. “What about the paradox this is causing?”

“Way ahead of you there,” he says, “worry about it later. Get them out of here, fast.”

She gives him a smile that turns a little watery halfway through and for a moment he thinks she’ll hug him, but then she sets her jaw and gets to rescuing the love of his life. He wonders what this will mean for the future and the Legion, but only for a moment. It can only be better than what he had before. He’s glad the person he is right now will never exist.

He holds down the switch until the end comes.

 

 

The first time they kiss since 2046, it’s 2016.

When Mick wakes up gripped by wild panic, Len’s face is the first thing he sees. He thinks he might pass out with the relief.

“What happened?” he growls.

“Rip keeps saying it’s impossible,” Len drawls in that way he has and Mick thinks he might cry, “but some future version of you showed up to save my life, according to Sara.”

“Go me,” Mick says, shooting for light and humorous but probably missing by a mile.

They stare at each other for a moment, and then Mick is on him and Len is giving as good as he’s getting.

“Len, I… I need to tell… I mean, I… I can’t even _say_ …” he blurts, trying to wrap his tongue around the words he’s had on the tip of it for so long.

“I know, Mick,” Len says, “I know, me too, I’ve known all along.”

Mick buries his head in Len’s chest, hears his beating heart, and sobs with relief.

Len cradles him and lets him get it out for a few moments, before he pulls him back up for more kisses, sweet and tender.

 

 

The time they stop counting, it’s every moment in history. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](%E2%80%9Daeremaee.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D)


End file.
